The Age Of AI

 Many believe that the threat of artificial intelligence is in the far future but that is not the case. Certain jobs are currently beginning to be taken over by AI one example of such is Panera. In the video, In The Age of AI, they demonstrated how Panera has slowly begun to replace cashiers with iPad like devices that you can order from, basically removing the need of the cashier though they still have them. Many people tend to overlook this when ordering from a chain restaurant and will tend to use the AI rather than engage with a human being. Some may be confused on the general definition of what AI is. AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is a set of tools that helps you maximize an objective function, making you more money in the long run.  

Huge tech companies are constantly buying smaller companies and employ AI scientists, allowing themselves to become among the richest companies in the world. According to, Toward Data Science, companies such as these tend to lean toward monopolization. While AI does cause massive job loss, it is rarely mentioned in the media about how AI will lead to an increase in monopolization that can put society in danger. Higher prices with less quality, and with the lack of competition many people will have no choice but to buy from these companies.  In this article it states, "The problem with the AI-powered economy is that industries naturally tend towards monopolization because of the positive feedback loop that is generated as a result of AI’s dependence on data. If a particular company using AI gains an upper hand over its competitors, it will be very hard to resist a self-perpetuating cycle of monopolization. " While those companies may not necessarily want to become a monopolization, their successful margin rates, and significantly increasing profits will cause the company to continue with the cycle it is currently on. Another great example of that is Google. The founders of Google initially did not want to infiltrate the privacy of their users but once they did and saw large profit they continued to do so. They took digital traces once known as digital exhaust, a good creator turned to these as a way to predict of what a user would click on after including this in their company, Google began seeing revenues from 2000-2005 increase by over 3,000%  and  after various companies saw Google face such an increase in profits other large companies like Facebook later followed this business mode. 

Google grew into more than just a search engine. Society today is surrounded with their products. But it is not just them, other large companies have also figured out a way to bypass users awareness or permission, the systems necessary to make it work are getting better, like  Google Home, smart speakers are being trained to recognize who you are and understand about you in real time to make inferences if you're depressed, manic, or sick. Just a change in the tone of your voice can lead the machine within your home to predict there is something wrong. But the dangers with these companies like Google or Amazon, (Alexa) and other big corporations is they do not have the same interests as the public.This also falls into the concern of privacy.

Privacy is rare nowadays and the scary thing about it is that much of the public is unaware of how much people know about their lives. Everywhere you go you are trailing data and the computers watch and learn to serve you better. While people think they use social media, social media uses us. The websites you go to generally sell majority of your information. "Cookies" follow you to the websites you go to in order to market ads that would most likely peak your interest.  Maximizing their use of ads. The government can even use these cookies for political gain. Just solely based on the websites you visit, they can tell if you're gay or straight, extremely religious or not, or if you are left leaning or right leaning. Isn't that terrifying? What this is, is surveillance capitalism, it is when businesses claim private human experience as a free source of raw material fabricated into predictions of human behavior and use this to determine what we do now, then and later want to know ur thoughts, dreams, friends overall mining data of your life. Technology Review discusses how companies will sell the political information they have gathered from each user on the internet in order to allow these political leaders, companies or other similar personas to target their ads and increase the number of voters they will have. That even gets in the way of pursuing a fair and proper vote. Since many are having their information taken and used for profit. 

While AI certainly has its benefits, and can be extremely useful, implementing them throughout the peoples daily lives is a moral issue. Most big companies have no problem crossing over that line either. With these technological advances the wealthy getting wealthier, and the  poor getting poorer will correlate with AI snd can rip society apart, making matters worse in that area economically. Working together to incorporate privacy laws against these companies are crucial and can help protect the people from the government and unwanted surveillance. Privacy is a right to the people  and without proper regulations AI can take that away, so the question is are the pros really worth the cons?